The Edge of Race

Critical examinations of education and race/racism

Kalervo Gulson, Zeus Leonardo, David Gillborn, Kalervo Gulson, Zeus Leonardo, David Gillborn, Kalervo N. Gulson, Zeus Leonardo, David Gillborn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317281078
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The phrase 'the edge of race' can be used both as a description and as a response to two key concerns. The first of these is that while race is increasingly on the periphery of education policy – with a growing disregard shown for racist inequities, as education systems become dominated by market-driven concerns – it is important that we map the shifting relations of race in neoliberal politics and policies. The second concern is that at this time, within and outside the spaces of the academy, even to mention race equity is to risk condemnation, marginalization, and ridicule.

The authors in this collection use 'the edge of race' as a provocation in order to examine the concepts, methodologies, policies, politics, processes, and practices associated with race and racism in education. The chapters offer empirical examples of the perpetuation and perniciousness of racism that point to the continued salience of research about race. Additionally, the chapters make contributions to conceptual and methodological understandings of race and racism. The contributors illustrate the contingency, productivity, and fragility of race as a concept, and point to how educational research continues to be a contested site in, and from which to study, race and education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Interest-divergence and the colour of cutbacks: race, recession and the undeclared war on Black children

David Gillborn

Centre for Research in Race & Education, School of Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and illustrating with examples from the English system, the paper addresses the hidden racist dimension to contemporary education reforms and argues that this is a predictable and recurrent theme at times of economic crisis. Derrick Bell’s concept of ‘interest-convergence’ argues that moments of racial progress are won when White power-holders perceive self-interest in accommodating the demands of minoritised groups; such moments are unusual and often short-lived. Presently, we are witnessing the reverse of this process; a period of pronounced interest-divergence, when White power-holders imagine that a direct advantage will accrue from the further exclusion and oppression of Black groups in society. Behind rhetoric that proclaims the need to improve educational standards for all and celebrates a commitment to closing the existing achievement gaps; in reality education reforms are being enacted that systematically disadvantage Black students and demonstrably widen educational inequalities.

Introduction

A woman in her 30s, who was involved in the riots in north London, said: ‘I think some people were there for justice for that boy who got killed. And the rest of them because of what’s happening: the cuts, the government not doing the right thing. No job, no money. And the young these days need to be heard. It’s got to be justice for them. (Newburn, Lewis, Addley, & Taylor, 2011)

For me it is clear that the root cause of this mindless selfishness is the same thing that I’ve spoken about for years. It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society. People allowed to feel that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities, and that their actions do not have consequences. Well, they do have consequences. (Cameron, 2011c¹)

In August 2011, major cities in England witnessed prolonged periods of urban unrest variously described as ‘uprisings’ by activists but dismissed as ‘mindless’ violence and ‘riots’ by media and politicians (John, 2011). The events began – as they often have in the past – after police action left a Black man dead in the street. Legitimate and peaceful family led protests were treated with disdain; frustration led to more violent protests and disturbances spread, at first throughout London and, eventually, across England (BBC News, 2011a). Subsequent research with participants confirmed what many argued at the time that the escalation reflected widespread anger and resentment towards authority, not least because of the racist use of stop-and-search police powers and the government’s withdrawal of the Educational Maintenance Allowance, a welfare payment that had helped fund disadvantaged students to stay in education beyond the legal minimum (Harrison, 2012; Lewis, Newburn, Taylor, & Ball, 2011; Newburn et al., 2011).

On occasion such extreme events can bring about a pause, even a reversal of policy as policy-makers realise that things have gone too far and that it is in everyone’s interest to at least be seen to take some action to curb the extremes of racial injustice. This is what the CRT scholar Derrick Bell (1980a) described as ‘interest-convergence’. Such situations are rare. Following the 2011 uprisings, policy-makers accelerated their reforms and used the ‘riots’ as yet more evidence that dramatic (Rightist) change was needed. This paper argues that the situation can be characterised as ‘interest-divergence’, that is, a period where White power-holders perceived an advantage in even greater race inequity. I further contend that this is a predictable and historically familiar process at times of major economic crisis, such as the global downturn sparked by the market collapse of 2008. The paper explores the nature of interest-divergence in education by examining the English case, where contemporary education reforms are having a direct and demonstrably negative impact on Black students.² In the first section, I outline the CRT concepts of interest-convergence and -divergence.

Policy in whose interests?

Traditional mainstream approaches to education policy tend to imagine a series of incremental steps leading towards improved attainments and ever greater degrees of equity and social inclusion. In recent decades, however, critical perspectives have become prominent, placing policy within a wider political context, often as part of a global neoliberal project of late capitalism (Apple, Kenway, & Singh, 2005; Ball, 2006; Rizvi & Lingard, 2009). Critical Race Theory (CRT) takes a complementary approach but, rather than emphasising a dominant role for social class inequities, CRT focuses primarily (though by no means exclusively) on the racial dynamics of social inequities and the political process. From its origins in radical US legal scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, CRT has grown into a cross-disciplinary international movement of scholars united by their focus on understanding and resisting the operation of White supremacy as a global political force (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas,1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Zamudio, Russell, Rios, & Bridgeman, 2011). In this perspective, White supremacy is understood not in terms of the crude and obvious fascistic groups that operate at the fringe of capitalist societies but as a system of taken-for-granted beliefs and practices that saturate the everyday mundane reality of society, supporting and extending the dominant position of White people (Delgado & Stefancic, 1997; Gillborn, 2005; Leonardo, 2009):

White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today … the most important political system of recent global history – the system of domination by which white people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people – is not seen as a political system at all. It is just taken for granted; it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political, are highlighted. (Mills, 1997, pp. 1–2, original emphasis)

Interest-convergence

One of the most influential concepts in the CRT canon addresses the means by which policy is re/made through a process that balances the interests of White elites against the dangers of pushing minoritised groups to the point of rebellion. Coined by the late African American legal scholar Derrick Bell, the concept of ‘interest-convergence’ can be summarised as follows:

The interests of blacks in achieving racial equality have been accommodated only when they have converged with the interests of powerful whites. (Taylor, 1998, p. 123)

Interest-convergence points to the political and power dimensions involved in bringing about racial justice. Active and organised resistance to White supremacy plays a major role in changing the context within which White power-holders make calculations about how much race inequity is sustainable. However, the concept also highlights the uncertain nature of even the most impressive-looking victories. For example, when reviewing the key civil rights decisions of the US Supreme Court, Bell (1980a) shows how, in retrospect, these famous victories can be seen to have operated in much more complex (and ambivalent) ways than is popularly imagined. Hailed as epochal victories that would change the social landscape forever, Bell argues that their progressive impact was not only uncertain and short-lived but that, in the long run, their consequence may be to further protect the racial status quo. Bell argues (and subsequent examination of the public record supports the view) that the famous Brown vs Board of Education legal decision, which was hailed as ending segregated education, served the interests of the White elite by removing the most obvious and crass forms of Apartheid-style public segregation while leaving the fabric of de facto economic, residential and educational segregation largely untouched (Bell, 1980a; 1980b, Dudziak, 2000). In this way, the USA could continue to present itself globally as the home of democracy while engaged in a cold war struggle with the Soviet Union to win economic and political allies in Africa.

The interest-convergence principle is probably the most frequently cited concept in CRT, but it is prone to a great deal of misunderstanding. In particular, it is vital to remember that interest-convergence, as set out by Bell, does not envisage a rational and balanced negotiation between minoritised groups and White power-holders (where change is achieved through the mere force of reason and logic). History suggests that advances in racial justice must be won through political protest and mobilisation that create a situation where – for White interests – taking some action against racism becomes the lesser of two evils because an even greater loss of privilege might be risked by failure to take any action at all. For example, the Brown decision may have served certain White interests, but it is inconceivable that there would have been any such change without the civil rights protests that brought the issue to the top of the international news agenda.

Interest-divergence

It is perhaps surprising that so much attention has focused on interest-convergence (which describes an exceptional set of social and political conditions) rather than its reverse, the much more common position, where racial interests are assumed to diverge. In fact, Bell wrote of the dangers of interest-divergence in the same Harvard Law Review article that launched the concept of interest-convergence (Bell, 1980a). It was Lani Guinier (2004), however, who placed interest-divergence at the centre of analysis when she addressed the reasons for the failure of the Brown decision to lead to long-lasting change. Guinier argues that interest-divergence holds the key to understanding ‘racism’s ever-shifting yet ever-present structure’ (p. 100). She views it as a powerful explanatory device in understanding how White supremacy is protected and emboldened (through the creation and manipulation of apparent interest-divergence between racial groups):

Those most advantaged by the status quo have historically manipulated race to order social, economic, and political relations to their benefit… The racialized hierarchies that result reinforce divergences of interest among and between groups with varying social status and privilege, which the ideology of white supremacy converts into rationales for the status quo. Racism normalizes these racialized hierarchies; it diverts attention from the unequal distribution of resources and power they perpetuate. Using race as a decoy offers short-term psychological advantages to poor and working-class whites, but it also masks how much poor whites have in common with poor blacks and other people of color. (Guinier, 2004, p. 114)

Although the concept has received less attention, the global economic crisis that began in 2008 points to the particular dangers of interest-divergence, by which I mean ‘a situation where White people imagine that some benefit will accrue from the further marginalization and oppression of racially minoritised groups’. Just as Bell (1980a) and Guinier (2004) highlight the important psychological benefits that poor Whites draw from their sense of racial superiority (despite their own continued economic marginalisation), so periods of economic downturn make interest-divergence an even greater threat to racial justice. When economic conditions become harder, we can hypothesise that White elites will perceive an even greater need to placate poor Whites by demonstrating the continued benefits of their whiteness (as a means of securing their loyalty to the existing structures of race and class inequality).

This form of interest-divergence is clearly evident on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, recent years have witnessed a campaign by politicians and the media to present the true racial victims in education as ‘white working-class’ children, especially boys (see Gillborn, 2010; Sveinsson, 2009). As a direct result, multicultural education programmes have been cut and special programmes targeted at supporting ‘poor’ white students have multiplied across the country (Gillborn, 2010). The most obvious example of interest-divergence in the USA concerns recent developments in Arizona; here the state has moved to outlaw a Raza Studies programme that demonstrated significant advances in the educational attainments of Latino/students:

… students have outperformed all other students on the state’s high stakes graduation exam and have graduated at a higher rate than their Anglo peers. In addition… students have matriculated to college at rate that is 129% greater than the national average for Chicana/o students. (Romero & Arce, 2010, p. 181)

Despite – or possibly because – of these outcomes, there was a vociferous campaign against multicultural education in the state. The campaign received national attention, and Raza Studies was demonised as stirring up trouble and resentment against White people:

… when an ethnic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – The edge of race: critical examinations of education and race/racism
• 1. Interest-divergence and the colour of cutbacks: race, recession and the undeclared war on Black children
• 2. A political investment: revisiting race and racism in the research process
• 3. Race talk and school equity in local print media: the discursive flexibility of whiteness and the promise of race-conscious talk
• 4. ‘Waiting for Superman’ to save black people: racial representation and the official antiracism of neoliberal school reform
• 5. From model minorities to disposable models: the de-legitimisation of educational success through discourses of authenticity
• 6. 14 souls, 19 days and 1600 dreams: engaging critical race praxis while living on the ‘edge’ of race
• 7. ‘Too Asian?’ On racism, paradox and ethno-nationalism
• 8. The story of schooling: critical race theory and the educational racial contract
• 9. You can’t erase race! Using CRT to explain the presence of race and racism in majority white suburban schools
• 10. ‘We had to hide we’re Muslim’: ambient fear, Islamic schools and the geographies of race and religion
• Index